From poor diet to environmental anxiety, climate change is affecting health and “professionals are ill-prepared” to respond

Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, allergies, zoonotic diseases, cholera, malnutrition, mental illness – health is also affected by the impact of climate change. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, One in four deaths around the world environmental factors.

Thinking about how health can be affected by climate change, the Universidade Nova de Lisbon’s National School of Public Health (ENSP) has launched the first course in Portugal on climate change and public health. “The course focused on the need to inform how climate changes environmental conditions, how these changes can have impacts on population health and what kind of impacts,” explains course coordinator Susana Viegas.

All of these impacts of climate change will increasingly mean an appropriate response from health services and “professionals need to adapt” – and one of the aims of the short course is exactly that. “at the moment, Health services professionals are not prepared to identify and treat [as “doenças do clima”] According to the needs of Portugal “, says the professor from the Department of Occupational and Environmental Health of the ENSP.